Dr Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist, who graduated from the University of Melbourne. He moonlights as a poet. Dilantha wrote his first poem at the ripe age of 32 and now has more than 1700 poems on his blog. His poems have been accepted/published in Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry and Ravens Perch, among others. He was also awarded the prize for "The emerging writer of the year - 2016" in the Godage National Literary Awards, Sri Lanka for his first collection of poems (Kite Dreams – A Sarasavi Publication), while being shortlisted for the poetry prize. Dilantha is a dual citizen of Sri Lanka and Australia, and shares his experiences from two different cultures. He blogs at - https://meandererworld. wordpress.com/

Tag: Poems

You think of the war veterans,
Especially the POWs who spent years
In Hanoi Hilton. You see glimpses of pain in their open eyes,
Hard exteriors that will never move
An inch, holding the fort, the rampart
Bullet proof, while their barrel chests
Grow outward in their autumns and winters.
Here, there is no more camouflage and prowling snipers,
Only their grandchildren holding
On to their palms, asking for a Christmas gift.

All they ask for is a little respect for their courage,
To have been darting through
Plumes of Agent Orange
Lurking through blades of elephant grass,
Holding a rifle around the shoulder.
They now spend their Sundays in church,
and all they ask for is a pension,
To spend on their morning coffees,
And evening teas, and some dollars to buy
Their grandchildren Christmas gifts.

How purple are the oxygenated arteries,
That flow out of the heart,
Of men, decorated with purple hearts,
Of the type of bravery that is selfless in execution.
Now they sit sipping hot beverages,
While one by one, knock off infinitely,
To become cargo to the courier angels.
Veterans, who will never forget the war,
Sharing little anecdotes,
That get passed around, mouth to mouth.

And what else but the commemoration of the anguish
As they saw dead bodies splattered on the ground,
But overcame it, to become unsung heroes,
Who defied everything thrown at them.
Heroes that get forgotten in this American west
As they become the organic fertilizer on a cemetery
Where wild flowers grow, as if to show
To the world, the beauty that is buried beneath,
Soiled in true valor. How courage only, could
Save the deplorables, hated equally, by the enemy
And by the home turf, caught in no man’s land,
As outcasts, now waking up on loaded minefields,
Where nightmares explode like
Claymore mines, to reminisce the horror of what
The eyes gathered, as the clutter of war.

The pharmacy that your liver encounters
Is nothing short of a waste dump.
You take Xanax to overhaul the anxiety
Allegra to ward off the asthma,
While the Coversyl you take is to keep
Your blood pressure round about the normal value.
And there is nothing to blame your disease-laden body,
But wear and tear, and a number
That keeps appreciating to time, taking with her,
All your diagnoses, of which the list,
Gets longer by the day, of how far away
You’re from, a well-oiled machine,
That needs a pharmacy, to make that serial number
Bigger every year, learning that
Little chemicals are like tiny angels,
That kill off the dangers inside your body,
To preclude the bigger winged angels,
From coming down to earth.

Through that great divide
Of balloon woman and boundless space
He climbs out through a plug
And a canal, to become
A focal point of appreciated love,
That in earnest,
Is just scissor’s cut away,
From independence,
When he will learn how to,
Squeeze out a little fluid,
From a wonderland of its own,
And learn to shoot, feet and hands,
That like typical offshoots
Probe their way into
Meaningful chemistries
Of what it is to be feeble
To the bone, and still
Be strong enough to conquer the floor,
While being felt by touch,
Gripped by one’s lust for life,
To never surrender, to anything
That rests beyond you,
Only beneath.

Only you will know your summon,
Your call to be the babe,
That traverses every degree
Of anatomical possibilities
And makes them,
Just random occurrences
Of free-movement,
Of passivity,
Of what will acclimatize
You to your own flesh,
When you will learn that,
You are just a weakling who will,
Outgrow your defenses,
And learn the strange
Art of life, in that borrowed
Suit you call your body,
And that bouncing creature
Inside the rib cage,
That will be your keeper,
Of what is worth spending
In careless wanderings,
And foolish prognoses.